Accountability of Armed Opposition Groups in International Law

by Liesbeth Zegveld

From the publisher:
"Who is accountable under international law for the acts committed by armed opposition groups?"

In today's world, the great majority of political conflicts involve non-state actors attempting to exert a political influence (such as overthrowing a government or bringing about secession). Notwithstanding their impact on the course of events, however, we tend to know little about these groups, and even less about how to treat their actions legally. This study will be of interest to academics, postgraduate students and professionals involved with armed conflict and international relations.

Liesbeth Zegveld practises as an international and criminal lawyer. In 1998, she received a Fulbright Scholarship to do research at New York University and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in Washington, D.C. For her dissertation on armed opposition groups she received the degree ‘cum laude' and The Netherlands' Human Rights Award, 2000. She is the co-author, with Frits Kalshocven, of the third edition of Constraints on the waging of war: an introduction to international humanitarian law (ICRC 2001).

From LWBN:
The exact day of release for this December title is unknown.

My Life as a Traitor

by Zarah Ghahramani and Robert Hillman

From the publisher:
At the age of twenty, an Iranian student named Zarah Ghahramani was swept off the streets of Tehran and taken to the notorious Evin prison, where criminals and political dissidents were held side by side in conditions of legendary brutality. Her crime, she asserts, was in wanting to slide back her headscarf to feel the sun on a few inches of her hair. That modest desire led her to a political activism fueled by the fearless idealism of the young. Her parents begged her to be prudent, but even they could not have imagined the horrors she faced in prison. She underwent psychological and physical torture, hanging on to sanity by scratching messages to fellow prisoners on the latrine door. She fought despair by recalling her idyllic childhood in a sprawling and affectionate family that prized tolerance and freedom of thought. After a show trial, Ghahramani was driven deep into the desert outside Tehran, uncertain if she was to be executed or freed. There she was abandoned to begin the long walk back to reclaim herself. In prose of astonishing dignity and force, Ghahramani recounts the ways in which power seduces and deforms. A richly textured memoir that celebrates a triumph of the individual over the state, My Life as a Traitor is an affecting addition to the literature of struggle and dissent.

Zarah Ghahramani was born in Tehran in 1981. After her release from prison, she moved to Australia. My Life as a Traitor is her first book. Robert Hillman is a journalist and novelist who has traveled widely in the Middle East.

From the critics:
Her straightforward style, elegant in its simplicity, has resonance and appeal beyond a mere record. - Publishers Weekly

Hybrid Sovereignty in the Arab Middle East: The Cases of Kuwait, Jordan, and Iraq

by Gökhan Bacik

From the publisher:
This book provides readers with a fresh analysis of the Arab state by using a new theoretical framework: hybrid sovereignty.

Hybrid sovereignty is used as an analytical tool to explain the survival of traditional patterns and forms of authority within the formal modern statehood. The author looks at various issue areas to make his argument: citizenship, the issue of minorities, electoral engineering, the failure of central rule, tribalism, and the lack of impersonal bureaucratic mechanism. He concludes that based on the problems at state-society level boundaries of statehood, the Arab state can be identified as hybrid-sovereign.

Gökhan Bacik is an assistant professor of international relations at Fatih University. Bacik also taught in different European Universities as Erasmus Visiting Professor. He is the author of September 11 and World Politics (2004), Modern International System: Genealogy, Teleology and the Expansion. (2007) He also published in Middle East Policy, International Review of Sociology, The Muslim World, Arab Studies Quarterly, Peace Review, Turkish Studies, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics.

Reforming Nuclear Export Controls: What Future for the Nuclear Suppliers Group?

by Christer Ahlstrom, Ian Anthony, Shannon N. Kile, and Vitaly Fedchenko

From the publisher:
The diversion to military programmes of materials and technologies obtained from foreign suppliers for peaceful purposes has played a prominent role in the known cases of nuclear proliferation. The need to strengthen nuclear export controls has been identified by the G8 group of industrialized states and the European Union. This study examines the structure and activities of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) as an ad hoc group of 44 states committed to applying effective controls on the export of nuclear-related dual-use equipment and material.

In this context, the study raises the questions of what kinds of nuclear activity are consistent with the obligations of states parties to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). It examines the relationship and contradictions between Article IV of the NPT, which gives non-nuclear weapon states parties an 'inalienable right' to nuclear materials and technology for peaceful uses, and the rules and guidelines agreed by the NSG, which are intended to block access to nuclear material and technologies for military use.

The study considers how theses guidelines are interpreted in two specific cases: Iran and India. It examines the potential impact on decision making within the NSG of the tendency to divide the world into categories based on 'good' and 'bad' behaviour using political criteria rather than the record of each recipient vis-a-vis the nuclear non-proliferation regime. The study also discusses whether and to what extent other current processes and instruments intended to prevent nuclear proliferation - specifically the Proliferation Security Initiative and the activities of the IAE and the UN '1540' Committee - cansupplement export control decision making, or even supplant the role of the NSG.

The Iraq War and International Law

by Phil Shiner and Andrew Williams (editors)

From the publisher:
The decision by the US and UK governments to use military force against Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent occupation and administration of that State, has brought into sharp focus fundamental fault lines in international law. The decision to invade, the conduct of the war and occupation, and the mechanisms used to administer the country all challenge the international legal community placing it at a crossroads.

When can the use of force be justified? What are the limits of military operations? What strength does international criminal law possess in the face of such interventions? How effective is the international regime of human rights in these circumstances?

How the law now responds and develops in the light of these matters will be of fundamental global importance for the 21st Century and an issue of considerable political and legal concern. This book explores this legal territory by examining a number of issues fundamental to the future direction of international law in the War's aftermath. It adopts both practical and academic perspectives in order to scrutinize key questions and consider the possible trajectories that international law might now follow.

Andrew Williams is an Associate Professor in the School of Law at the University of Warwick, and author of 'EU Human Rights Policies: A Study in Irony' (2004 OUP) as well as a number of journal articles on human rights. Phil Shiner is an Honorary Professor at the London Metropolitan University and a Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics. He has also been active as a human rights practitioner litigating various cases in UK courts concerning the death and torture of Iraqi civilians in detention and the unlawful killings of civilians by forces exercising policing functions.

From LWBN:
The exact day of release for this December title is unknown.

The Deserter's Tale: The Story of an Ordinary Soldier Who Walked Away from the War in Iraq

by Joshua Key with Lawrence Hill

From the publisher:
In the first ever memoir from a young soldier who deserted from the war in Iraq, Joshua Key offers a vivid and damning indictment of what we are doing there and how the war itself is being waged.

Key, a young husband and father from a conservative background, enlisted in the Army in 2002 to get training as a welder and lift his family out of poverty. A year later, Key was sent to Ramadi where he found himself participating in a war that was not the campaign against terrorists and evildoers he had expected.

He saw Iraqi civilians beaten, shot, and killed for little or no provocation. Nearly ever other night, he participated in raids on homes that found only terrified families and no evidence of terrorist activity. On leave, Key knew he could not return so he took his family underground, finally seeking asylum in Canada. The Deserter's Tale is the story of a patriotic family man who went to war believing unquestioningly in his government's commitment to integrity and justice, and how what he saw in Iraq transformed him into someone who could no longer serve his country.

From the critics:
“Destined to become part of the literature of the Iraq war . . . A substantial contribution to history.”—Los Angeles Times

Vividly written - Booklist
From LWBN:
This is the first paperback edition of a hardcover book.

Young and Defiant in Tehran

by Shahram Khosravi

From the publisher:
With more than half its population under twenty years old, Iran is one of the world's most youthful nations. The Iranian state depicts its youth population in two ways: as a homogenous mass, "an army of twenty millions" devoted to the Revolution, or as alienated, inauthentic, Westernized consumers who constitute a threat to the society. Much of the focus of the Islamic regime has been on ways to protect Iranian young people from moral hazards and to prevent them from providing a gateway for cultural invasion from the West. Iranian authorities express their anxieties through campaigns that target the young generation and its lifestyle, and that have led to the criminalization of many of the behaviors that make up youth culture.

In this ethnography of contemporary youth culture in Iran's capital, Shahram Khosravi examines how young Tehranis struggle for identity in the battle over the right to self-expression. Khosravi looks closely at the strictures confronting Iranian youth and the ways transnational cultural influences penetrate and flourish. Focusing on gathering places such as shopping centers and coffee shops, Khosravi examines the practices of everyday life through which young Tehranis demonstrate defiance against the official culture and parental dominance. In addition to being sites of opposition, Khosravi argues, these alternative spaces serve as creative centers for expression and, above all, imagination. His analysis reveals the transformative power these spaces have and how they enable young Iranians to develop their own culture as well as individual and generational identities. The text is enriched by examples from literature and cinema and by journalistic reports from the author's fieldwork.

Shahram Khosravi teaches in the Department of Social Anthropology at Stockholm University.

From LWBN:
The exact day of release for this December title is unknown.

The Evil of Terrorism: Diagnosis and Countermeasures

By Uriel Rosenthal, Erwin R. Muller

From the publisher:
The United States and other countries throughout the world have suffered from catastrophic terrorism causing mass casualties. Elsewhere, terrorists have taken the lives of prominent people in ostentatiously cruel ways. In Iraq, bloody terrorist attacks are an endemic phenomenon. They have become part of daily life. There is no reason to expect a reduction of the new terrorism in the foreseeable future. On the contrary, there will be new waves of terrorism, including attacks with unconventional means.

The globalization of the new terrorism is reflected not only in the mobility of terrorists but especially in the worldwide distribution of ideas and methods practiced by terrorist networks. The world is facing the threat of a shift from terrorism to terror - towards a society intimidated by a continuous threat of arbitrary, massive violence.

This book addresses the shift in many parts of the world from terrorism to an atmosphere of terror. It stresses the lack of symmetry between democratic governments which have to obey the role of law and international conventions, and terrorists cherishing a total denial of rules and norms.

The authors formulate five missions for democratic governments: do not deny the most serious threat; make life as difficult as possible for terrorists; upgrade the quality of acute crisis management in the case of a terrorist attack; improve the quality of consequences management after terrorist attacks; and increase the effort to channel collective stress in the aftermath of a terrorist assault.

The authors claim that the fight against terrorism is first and foremost a responsibility of democratic states. Throughout its existence, the United Nations has been unable to give shape and substance to an effective counterterrorism strategy. An alliance of democratic states would be in a much better position to take on the legitimate fight against international terrorism.

From LWBN:
The exact day of release for this December title is unknown.

The International Struggle Over Iraq: Politics in the UN Security Council 1980-2005

by David M Malone

From the publisher:
Iraq has dominated international headlines in recent years, but its controversial role in international affairs goes back much further. The key arena for these power politics over Iraq has been the United Nations Security Council. Spanning the last quarter century, The International Struggle over Iraq examines the impact the United Nations Security Council has had on Iraq - and Iraq's impact on the Security Council.

The story is a fascinating one. Beginning in 1980, in the crucible of the Iran-Iraq War, the Council found a common voice as a peacemaker after the divisions of the cold war. That peacemaking role was cemented when a UN-mandated force expelled Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1991, offering a glimpse of a new role for the UN in the 'New World Order'. But unilateralism soon set in, as the Security Council struggled under the weight and bureaucratic demands of its changing identity. The Security Council gradually abandoned its traditional political and military tools for the legal-regulatory approach, but was unable to bridge the gap between those who believed allegations of Iraqi possession of weapons of mass destruction and those who didn't. Growing paralysis led eventually to deadlock in the Council in 2002, with the result that it was sidelined during the 2003 Coalition invasion. This relegation, when combined with the loss of some of its best and brightest in a massive truck bomb in Iraq later that year, precipitated a deep crisis of confidence. The future role of the UN Security Council has now, once again, become uncertain.

The paperback edition contains a substantial new preface covering recent developments. Drawing on the author's unparalleled access to UN insiders, this volume offers radical new insights into one of the most persistent crises in international affairs, and the different roles the world's central peace-making forum has played in it.

From LWBN:
This is the first paperback edition of a hardcover book.

The Routledge Handbook to the U.S. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq: 2001-2006

by Mark Grossman

From the publisher:
The U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan is hard to ignore. Yet, not everyone knows the background of the conflicts - how they started, why they started, and what the area is really like.

Mark Grossman, noted reference book editor, has collected the first one-volume reference book on the subject of the U.S.'s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan. Not only does the book include the traditional A-Z entries of an encyclopedia, but also specialized sections of information, including longer entries explaining the history of Afghanistan, the history and impact of Islam, the role of Special Operations forces, and more. A third section includes historical documents - speeches, papers, etc. Most are post-9/11, but there are several that are historical documents, giving the reader a complete overview of the history of the subject. The fourth section is a timeline of the events that led to 9/11, and those events that followed. Each section is tagged to the others, creating a web of information for the reader.

Middle Eastern Terrorism: From Black September to September 11

by Mark Ensalaco

From the publisher:
Since the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine's first airplane hijacking in September 1970, Middle Eastern terrorists have sacrificed innocent human lives in the name of ideology. From "Black September" to the Munich Olympics, to the embassy bombing in Beirut, to the devastating attacks of September 11, and beyond, terrorism has emerged as the most important security concern of our time.

"Where did this come from?" Inspired by a student's question on the morning of September 11, 2001, Mark Ensalaco realized that among the many separate sources about terrorism no book offers a complete history. Ensalaco has written a thoroughly researched narrative account of the origin of Middle Eastern terrorism, addressing when and why terrorists started targeting Americans and American interests, and what led to the September 11 attacks.

Ensalaco reveals the changing of motivations from secular Palestinian nationalism to militant Islam and demonstrates how competition among terrorists for resources and notoriety has driven them to increasingly extreme tactics. As he argues, terrorist attacks grew from spectacle to atrocity. Drawing on popular works and scholarly sources, Middle Eastern Terrorism tells this story in rich detail with great clarity and insight.

"There is little or no work like this available to scholars, teachers, and citizens at a time when an informed public should be engaged in a thoughtful discourse on this matter."--Donna M. Schlagheck, author of International Terrorism: An Introduction to Concepts and Actors

From LWBN:
The exact day of release for this December title is unknown.

Architects of Delusion: Europe, America, and the Iraq War

by Simon Serfaty

From the publisher:
The commencement of war on Iraq in 2003 was met with a variety of reactions around the globe. In Architects of Delusion, Simon Serfaty presents a historical analysis of how and why the decision to wage war was endorsed by some of America's main European allies, especially Britain, and opposed by others, especially France and Germany.

Tony Blair, George W. Bush, Jacques Chirac, and Gerhard Schroeder were, Serfaty argues, the architects of one of the most serious crises in postwar transatlantic relations. These four heads of state were the victims not only of their personal delusions but also those of the nations they lead. They all played the hand that their countries had dealt them—the forceful hand of a righteous America, the principled acquiescence of a faithful Britain, the determined intransigence of a quarrelsome France, and the ambiguous "new way" of a recast Germany.

Serfaty's deft interweaving of the political histories and cultures of the four countries and the personalities of their leaders transcends the Europe-bashing debate sparked by the Iraq invasion. He contends that not one of these four leaders was entirely right or entirely wrong in his approach to the others or to the issues, before and during the war. For the resulting wounds to heal, though, and for the continuity of transatlantic relations, he reminds us that the United States and France must end their estrangement, France and Britain must resolve their differences, Germany must carry its weight relative to both France and Britain, and that the United States must exert the same visionary leadership for the twenty-first century that it showed during its rise to preeminence in thetwentieth century.

From LWBN:
The exact day of release for this December title is unknown.

The Impact of USA Patriot Act on American Society: An Evidence Based Assessment

by Kam C. Wong

From the publisher:
Much has been written about the USA Patriot Act, and the controversy that surrounds this far-reaching legislation has also generated a great deal of confusion and uncertainty about its impact and importance in the war on terrorism. As Professor Kam C. Wong notes in this important contribution to the literature: “There is little scholarly research on the legislation, implementation and impact of the Act.”

Undoubtedly, few Americans are actually aware of most of the details in the Act, or its implications in a free society. The events of September 11, 2001 in attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon prompted a unique response by Congress in passing a series of wide reaching laws, expanding the powers of law enforcement and the judiciary. Of particular concern to many are the requirements of public and private organizations to provide information in connection with homeland security that is considered intrusive and in violation of privacy rights. Ultimately, it will be many years before the actual impact of the Patriot Act can be assessed. In this new and important book, Professor Wong provides a critical analysis of the legislation and its capacity for abuse.

Globalization and WMD Proliferation: Terrorism, Transnational Networks and International Security

by James A Russell and James J Wirtz (editors)

From the publisher:
This edited volume explores the relationship between the accelerating process of globalization and the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, which is increasingly seen as the pre-eminent threat to international security.

The proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction has traditionally been seen as a function of the 'security dilemma' in the state-based international system. But the advent of the nuclear supply network pieced together by the Pakistani scientist A. Q. Khan represented a departure from this model, involving a variety of organizations not directly connected to a state. This volume assembles an international group of experts in order to assess the relationship between proliferation and globalization to ascertain how contemporary communication, transportation and financial networks are facilitating or constraining trade in dangerous contraband. The book ultimately seeks to determine whether globalization is fundamentally altering the nature of the proliferation problem, particularly the threat that Weapons of Mass Destruction might fall into the hands of terrorists.

This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear proliferation, international security, terrorism and IR in general.

Pakistan Strategic Culture and Foreign Policy Making

by Ijaz Khan

From the publisher:
This book is to date the first and only study on Pakistan's foreign policy decision making process. It discusses the hows and whys of its foreign policy as it developed in a particular fashion based on a certain self view generating a world view. Post 9/11 Change requires a fundamental change in self image and world view based on that new self image that goes beyond the act of becoming US ally in Afghanistan or abandoning the policy of supporting Taliban.

The main topic of the study is identification of that change, its requirements and some basic suggestions as to how to go about it. The book traces the historical International and Domestic context of Pakistan's Post 9/11 Afghan Policy. It analyses the regional impact of the decision, the domestic debate that it generated and concludes with identifications of implications for changes in Pakistan, required for sustenance of its changed policy.

Protecting Human Security in a Post 9/11 World: Critical and Global Insights

by Giorgio Shani, Makoto Sato, Mustapha Kamal Pasha (editors)

From the publisher:
Written by leading authorities from Asia, Africa, Europe, and North and South America, this groundbreaking volume offers the first truly global and critical perspective on human security in the post 9/11 world. The collection offers unique interpretations on mainstream discourses on human security; blends theory and comparative analysis of the human security condition in innovative ways; and opens up the field to a new research agenda in critical human security to offer a challenging and provocative perspective on a key global issue.

GIORGIO SHANI is Associate Professor in the College of International Relations, Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan. He is author of Sikh Nationalism and Identity in a Global Age, as well as numerous articles in internationally recognised journals, including The Cambridge Review of International Affairs.

MAKOTO SATO is Professor in the College of International Relations, and is currently serving as Dean of Research at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, Japan. Professor Sato was Senior Associate Member at St Anthony's College, Oxford, UK, from April 2004 to March 2005. He is the author of many books and articles in both Japanese and English on human security, international migration, southern Africa and Japanese diplomacy. Recent major publications include Human Security: Meeting Global Challenges edited with Tsugio Ando.

MUSTAPHA KAMAL PASHA is Professor and Chair of the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Aberdeen, UK. Previously, he taught at the School of International Service, American University in Washington, DC (1993-2005), USA. In 2001, he was Program Director of the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association and currently serves on the ISA's Nominating Committee. He is the author or co-author of three books and has been widely published in leading journals in the field, including Alternatives, Millennium, Journal of Developing Areas, Studies in Comparative International Development, and Critical Review of International Social Philosophy and Politics.

The Mind of the Terrorist: The Psychology of Terrorism from the IRA to al-Qaeda

by Jerrold M. Post

From the publisher:
In contrast to the widely held assumption that terrorists as crazed fanatics, Jerrold Post demonstrates they are psychologically “normal” and that “hatred has been bred in the bone”.

He reveals the powerful motivations that drive these ordinary people to such extraordinary evil by exploring the different types of terrorists, from national-separatists like the Irish Republican Army to social revolutionary terrorists like the Shining Path, as well as religious extremists like al-Qaeda and Aum Shinrikyo. In The Mind of the Terrorist, Post uses his expertise to explain how the terrorist mind works and how this information can help us to combat terrorism more effectively.

"Jerrold Post's compelling Mind of the Terrorist is a comprehensive and informative account of the psychology of terrorists and how their history has shaped their motivations." -- Peter Bergen author of Holy War, Inc. and The Osama bin Laden I Know

"Terrorism is a form of psychological warfare, requiring a psychologically sophisticated response based on an understanding of how terrorists think. Jerry Post provides us a road map-not only of the mind of the terrorist-but also how we can use that understanding to dissuade, deter, and destroy terrorist groups. The strategy Post develops is based on decades of studying violent individuals, including interviews of terrorists, some of which he describes in detail in these pages. Post is a teacher of terrorism teachers-and his latest offering is a gift to all who wish to understand the myriad psychological roots of terrorism." -- Jessica Stern is the author of Terror in the Name of God and Academic Director of the Program on Terrorism and the Law at Harvard Law School

Television and Terror: Conflicting Times and the Crisis of News Discourse

by Andrew Hoskins and Ben O'Loughlin

From the publisher:
The advent of the twenty-first century was marked by a succession of conflicts and catastrophes that demanded unrestrained journalism. Yet, the principle mass news medium of television has become torn between strategies of containment and the amplification of security threats. Hoskins and O'Loughlin demonstrate that television, tarnished by its economy of liveness and its default impositions of immediacy, brevity and simultaneity, fails to deliver a critical and consistent exposition adequate to our conflicting times.

ANDREW HOSKINS is Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of Warwick, UK. His Televising War: From Vietnam to Iraq (2004) develops his concept of 'new memory' in relation to conflict. He is founding Editor-in-Chief of Memory Studies and founding Co-Editor of Media, War & Conflict, new international and interdisciplinary journals being launched in 2008. His current work includes: Media and Memory (2007). BEN O'LOUGHLIN is Lecturer in International Relations at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. He completed his doctorate in Politics at the University of Oxford in 2005 and has worked since 2004 on the Economic and Social Research Council's New Security Challenges programme. He is Reviews Editor for the journal Media, War and Conflict.

Invitation to Terror: The Expanding Empire of the Unknown

by Frank Furedi

From the publisher:
Frank Furedi’s claim that the social attitude of the West inadvertently invites acts of terrorism is an unsettling thought, but one that must be addressed in open discussion. He argues that what we really need to worry about is not what terrorist do, but our reaction to it. Therefore, by changing the way we engage with it, we can diminish the impact of this threat.

Virtually everyone agrees that terrorism is defined by its impact on the public it targets. Yet there seems to be very little open discussion about how society has responded to it and how people are affected by it. This is no small gap in our understanding of 21st century terrorism. Invitation to Terror argues that what we really need to worry about is not what terrorists do but our reaction to it. It argues that Western society lacks the cultural and intellectual resources to deal with this threat. Politicians who frequently claim that ‘our way of life’ faces an existential threat find it difficult to explain just what that way of life is and why it is worth defending.

Furedi claims that the west has become so risk and loss averse that it inadvertently invites acts of terrorism. This book details how, as society has become increasingly apprehensive about the future, it has reached the point where it regards itself as a vulnerable target. This defensive response is influenced by many causes the most important of which is the difficulty society has in endowing conflict and the threat it faces with meaning. The words used to describe the threat of terrorism – unimaginable, incomprehensible, beyond meaning – serve to deflect our understanding of the issues at stake. Furedi argues that the problem is not ‘them’ and does not come from ‘there’. It is us and comes from within. The good news is that it is not very difficult to diminish the impact of this threat through changing the way we engage with it.

Frank Furedi is Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent at Canterbury. He is the author of numerous books including Culture of Fear Revisited, Politics of Fear and Where Have all the Intellectuals Gone?, all published by Continuum.

Contemporary Security and Strategy

by Craig A. Snyder

From the publisher:
This rigorously-edited text brings together a range of specially-commissioned chapters to provide an accessible introduction to Security Studies in the 21st century. The second edition has been expanded to cover developments in global and regional security; nuclear proliferation; terrorism; intervention and peacekeeping and includes 8 entirely new chapters.

CRAIG A. SNYDER is Director of the International Relations Postgraduate Programme, Deakin University. His research interests focus around the construction of regional security patterns in Europe and the Asia Pacific.

The Kurds Ascending: The Evolving Solution to the Kurdish Problem in Iraq and Turkey

by Michael M. Gunter

From the publisher:
For the first time in their modern history, the Kurds in Iraq and Turkey at least are cautiously ascending. This is because of two major reasons. (1) In northern Iraq the two U.S. wars against Saddam Hussein have had the fortuitous side effect of helping to create a Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). The KRG has become an island of democratic stability, peace, and burgeoning economic progress, as well as an autonomous part of a projected federal, democratic, post-Saddam-Hussein Iraq. If such an Iraq proves impossible to construct, as it well may, the KRG is positioned to become independent. Either way, the evolution of a solution to the Kurdish problem in Iraq is clear. (2) Furthermore, Turkey’s successful EU candidacy would have the additional fortuitous side effect of granting that country’s ethnic Kurds their full democratic rights that have hitherto been denied. Although this evolving solution to the Kurdish problem in Iraq and Turkey remains cautiously fragile and would not apply to the Kurds in Iran and Syria because they have not experienced the recent developments their co-nationals in Iraq and Turkey have, it does represent a strikingly positive future that until recently seemed so bleak.

Michael M. Gunter is a professor of political science at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tennessee and teaches during the summer at the International University in Vienna, Austria. He is the author of five critically praised scholarly books on the Kurdish question, the most recent being Kurdish Historical Dictionary, 2004; The Kurdish Predicament in Iraq: A Political Analysis, 1999; and The Kurds and the Future of Turkey, 1997. In addition, he is the co-editor (with Mohammed M. A. Ahmed) of The Kurdish Question and the 2003 Iraqi War, 2005; and The Evolution of Kurdish Nationalism, 2007. He has also published numerous scholarly articles on the Kurds in such leading periodicals as the Middle East Journal, Middle East Quarterly, Middle East Policy, Current History, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, and Orient, among others, and was a former Senior Fulbright Lecturer in International Relations in Turkey and Israel. He has been interviewed about the Kurdish question on numerous occasions by the international and national press.

Tabloid Terror: War, Culture and Geopolitics

by Francoi Debrix

From the publisher:
This book analyzes the methods, effects, and mechanisms by which international relations reach the US citizen. Deftly dissecting the interrelationships of national identity formation, corporate ‘news and opinion’ dissemination, and the quasi-academic apparatus of war justification - focusing on the Bush administration's exploitation of the fear and insecurity caused by 9/11 and how this has manifested itself in the US media (especially the tabloid populist media). Debrix explains how all serve to defend and produce state power and develops a model of tabloidized international relations, where responses are both organized by, and supportive of, a strong centralized US government. The field of International Relations sorely needs such analytics, in so far as it explains how people in their everyday lives relate to transnational issues.
Tabloid Terror critically covers a wide variety of US popular culture from the Internet to Fox News; analyzes diverse authors as Julia Kristeva, J.G. Ballard and Robert Kaplan and takes into account renowned international relations interlocutors as Don Imus, Bill O’Reilly, and Tommy Franks.

Hogs in the Shadows: Combat Stories from Marine Snipers in Iraq

by Milo S. Afong

From the publisher:
They have one mission-and they accomplish it with one bullet...

In Operation Iraqi Freedom, there is a special breed of hunter for whom the prey is the enemy- and every day is hunting season. This soldier is a HOG - a Hunter of Gunmen. These stories give firsthand accounts of just how dangerous Iraq can be, the experience of these young men, and the consequences involved with being on a Marine Scout/Sniper team that few can make, and possessing the precision that no others can master. From sniping on a rooftop in Baghdad to unknowingly being surrounded in a palm grove in the city of Hit, these stories will transport the reader right into the heat of the desert war, where one shot can make all the difference.

Milo S. Afong enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1999, and graduated first in his class from the 1st Marine Divisions Scout/Sniper platoon. He is the recipient of the Purple Heart, the Combat Action Ribbon, and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal with the Combat Distinguishing Devise.

The Nuclear Jihadist: The True Story of the Man Who Sold the World's Most Dangerous Secrets...And How We Could Have Stopped Him

by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins

From CWBN:
The world has entered a second nuclear age. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the threat of nuclear annihilation is on the rise. Should such an assault occur, there is a strong likelihood that the trail of devastation will lead back to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani father of the Islamic bomb and the mastermind behind a vast clandestine enterprise that has sold nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea, and Libya. Khan's loose-knit organization was and still may be a nuclear Wal-Mart, selling weapons blueprints, parts, and the expertise to assemble the works into a do-it-yourself bomb kit. Amazingly, American authorities could have halted his operation, but they chose instead to watch and wait. Khan proved that the international safeguards the world relied on no longer worked.

Journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins tell this alarming tale of international intrigue through the eyes of the European and American officials who suspected Khan, tracked him, and ultimately shut him down, but only after the nuclear genie was long out of the bottle.

Security and the War on Terror: Civil-Military Cooperation in a New Age

by Alex Bellamy

From the publisher:
This edited volume provides new dimensions to the debate on global terrorism by opening up interdisciplinary conversations between hitherto unexplored strategic, economic, ethical and legal approaches, which offer important and practically relevant opportunities to rethink how states can respond to terrorist threats. The book uses these sources of insight to examine the nature and meaning of security in a rapidly changing world.

Islamism and Modernism: The Changing Discourse in Iran

by Farhang Rajaee

From the publisher:
While many previous books have probed the causes of Iran's Islamic Revolution of 1979, few have focused on the power of religion in shaping a national identity over the decades leading up to it. Islamism and Modernism captures the metamorphosis of the Islamic movement in Iran, from encounters with Great Britain and the United States in the 1920s through twenty-first-century struggles between those seeking to reform Islam's role and those who take a hardline defensive stance.

Capturing the views of four generations of Muslim activists, Farhang Rajahee describes how the extremism of the 1960s brought more confidence to concerned Islam-minded Iranians and radicalized the Muslim world while Islamic alternatives to modernity were presented. Subsequent ideologies gave rise to the revolution, which in turn has fed a restructuring of Islam as a faith rather than as an ideology.

Presenting thought-provoking discussions of religious thinkers such as Ha'eri, Burujerdi, Bazargan, and Shari'ati, along with contemporaries such as Kadivar, Soroush, and Shabestari, the author sheds rare light on the voices fueling contemporary Islamic thinking in Iran. A comprehensive study of these interwoven aspects of politics, religion, society, and identity, Islamism and Modernism offers crucial new insight into the aftermath of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution fought one hundred years ago—and its ramifications for the newest generation to face the crossroads of modernity and Islamic discourse in modern Iran today.

Farhang Rajaee is Professor of Political Science and Director of the College of Humanities at Carleton University in Ottowa, Canada. He previously taught at the University of Tehran and the Iranian Academy of Philosophy.

The CIA World Factbook 2008

by the Central Intelligence Agency

From the publisher:
Chock full of up-to-date coverage of countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, this fascinating reference—intended for use by government officials—should be on the shelf of every school, world traveler, and journalist.

For each country, you’ll find: a thorough introduction with historical background; detailed geographical facts, including current environmental issues; and a full description of the people, with information on literacy rates, HIV prevalence, and major infectious diseases. There are also details on conventional political parties, contact information for diplomatic representation, and the nation’s economic status, complete with statistics.

A synopsis of transnational issues includes narcotic-related corruption. Along with multiple appendices, this attractive book features pages of beautiful, recently-updated maps, and three high quality fold-out posters.

Chechen Jihad: Al Qaeda's Training Ground and the Next Wave of Terror

by Yossef Bodansky

From the publisher:
Yossef Bodansky is a New York Times bestselling author, and one of the most respected – and best–informed – experts on radical Islamism in the world today. Now, Bodansky returns to alert readers to the future course the struggle between Islamist extremism and the West – by turning the spotlight on the troubled region of Chechnya, which Bodansky pinpoints as the new crucible of terror in the struggle between east and west.

In Chechen Jihad, Bodansky draws on mountains of previously unseen intelligence from his insider sources, to offer the most comprehensive – and startling – portrait of the Chechenization phenomenon and what it means for the United States and the greater war on terror. As he reveals, the final years of US–Soviet relations left Chechnya as a fertile breeding ground for the mujahadin, and in the past decade a combination of militant native Chechen anti–Americans, anti–Russian agitators, and Middle Eastern jihadis have joined forces to help al Qaeda and the greater Islamist movement pursue its war against the west.

Yossef Bodansky has been the director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare for more than a decade. He is the longtime director of research at the International Strategic Studies Association and senior editor for the Defense and Foreign Affairs group of publications. Bodansky has been a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, as well as a former senior consultant for the U.S. departments of Defense and State. The author of the number one New York Times bestseller Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America, he makes his primary home in Washington, D.C., and travels extensively to the Middle East and around the world.